


Words In The Margins

by Jenwryn



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Future Fic, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-22
Updated: 2009-04-22
Packaged: 2017-10-02 08:14:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her love is nonsense to them, but it doesn't matter.</p><p>Future fic; Orihime is an adult; AU is my friend.</p><p>Vague spoilers for Hueco Mondo Arc.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Words In The Margins

**Author's Note:**

> As to how this story came to be... yes, I'm back in my old habits, which is to say, it was something I read in a textbook which made me write this. So if you think it's a bit weird, there's a simple explanation: the person who wrote it is also very, very weird. My only justification is the fact that, if you cast your minds waaaay back to Vol.5 of the manga, you'll remember that it was our Hime who came third in their final class exams. See? The girl's as smart as hell. Now we just need to get her to grow up and act like it, thankyouverymuch, Kubo-san.

"_Colourless green ideas sleep furiously_. This is a very interesting sentence, because it shows that syntax can be separated from semantics - that form can be separated from meaning. The sentence doesn't seem to mean anything, but it sounds like a sentence."

~ Howard Lasnick, 'The Human Language'.

*

_  
Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. _The sentence is meaningless, Orihime thinks, as she strokes her hand, almost absently, across the white sheets that cover the shoulder of the man - the arrancar - lying close beside her. The form of the sentence is certainly correct, and it sounds like something that could be said, but it is, nevertheless, completely pointless. Still, it floats in her mind, a fragment caught there, from one of the textbooks spread out on the table behind her, a little way away from their bed. It hangs there, like poetry, which is what she thinks it is, perhaps, a fact which the textbook failed to take into consideration. But then, realistically, poetry clings closer to her soul than textbooks do, if she were to come down to the truth of the matter. There are words, words written in the margins of her class books, which would make her professors raise their eyebrows if they saw them. Words in Japanese. Words in Spanish. Words which hide secrets in the open; words which speak of feelings she cannot even begin to sound out. She never used to write, when she was younger, in the past, but the silent depths of Hueco Mondo seem to summon the words upwards towards her, call them out of her, as if they were salt rising to the surface of brickwork. The silent depths of this world simply have that effect.

Orihime strokes at the sheet again; smiles down at her sleeping companion. He shifts, quiet even in his resting state, though his face is moving with emotions that he would never permit, were he conscious. The coloured lines on his cheeks seem to gleam in the moonlight. _He_ is a colourless green idea, she thinks, whimsy playing with the words in her head, even as her fingers slide to his face. She curves her hand and turns it over, grazing her knuckles against cool, cool skin, and her littlest finger touching lightly at the place where his mask scoops outwards, curving, as though it wishes to punctuate the gaze of his right eye. His eyes are closed now, though, their lashes dark and trembling wildly as he dreams. A nightmare, she thinks, and turns her hand back over and soothes his forehead with the softness of her palm. He had never dreamed during the whole of his existence, he had confessed to her one night, sitting up with the sheets pooled at his waist, and gazing at her earnestly through the white-light. He had never dreamt, until he had met her; until she had twisted him into the act of dreaming.

There is a quiet, curious corner of her heart, which thinks that it can _see_ him becoming human.

There is another part of her heart, smaller, and well trained to keep out of sight of her mind's eye, which thinks that the process of change is mutual, and she questions what it is that _she_ is becoming, as the months pass, as the ivory desert leaks its sand into the very veins of her soul; as the green, green eyes of the sleeping one beside her take hold of her entirely.

It doesn't matter. She is what she is, so long as what she is is _his._

She brushes dark hair from his face, and whispers his name to herself, just to hear it spoken.

Ulquiorra indulges her. He still calls her 'woman' in that old disdainful tone of his, and rolls his eyes towards the sky as though to ask what it is that he has done to deserve this bother. But he does indulge her; she hasn't completely given up her human life. He tears her gaps in the world with his bare hands, and she comes and goes as she fancies - it is a daily act of trust, a daily profession of the invisible chains that bind her to him; the chains that she has taken on, of her own free will. She spends her days in the sunshine, when university term is in, laughing and smiling and learning. She studies, and she reads books, and she watches Tatsuki's competitions. And when people ask where she lives, where she goes at night, where she spends her holidays, she just grins and bounces, and sometimes she even tells them the truth, because they laugh at that as well. This is a secret that Orihime has learnt: people believe what they wish to believe.

As for her friends - those who truly do know - they have learnt to mask the sadness in their eyes, but she knows they do not understand, no matter how she explains or what she says.

_Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. _Her love is nonsense to them, nonsense like the words that rock gently in her mind, like a baby in a basket. But she has grown enough, he has let her grow enough, this white world of shadows and milk-light has forced her to grow enough, for her to know that there are some things which can only ever be truly comprehended by the soul that _already _comprehends. And when Ulquiorra shifts amongst their sheets, and opens his eyes with a small, soft sigh, reaching his hand up to pull her back down against him, embracing her, she knows that what her own soul comprehends is more than enough. He is her home, her solace, her love beneath a dark-hung sky; and they are the only two who truly need to know.


End file.
